Soft Batch Beef Jerky!

hey everybody hunter Fisher trapper trader guide scout and interpreter and country cook Steve hall here in Nashville Tennessee along with pretty miss Sheila here on cookin with shotgun red today we're gonna make some soft chew beef jerky and I love this stuff because it's like it's almost like the inside texture of a slim jim even though don't buy Slim Jim Zimmer nasty but and this stuff is great years ago I used to buy it and I tell everybody look up these American harvest dehydrators and they also have great seasoning to use hamburger and seasoning and dehydrated and man it just tears off like nice chunks but I got to notice and when I started looking for it now now it's nesco and in the corner it says American harvest so they must have bought the company out but I'm sure their seasonings are the same and today what I'm gonna do is I get a whole bunch of these packets and what's really nice about this nesco or or American harvest seasoning is they have it so you can use one pack of seasoning and one packet here for a pound of meat so if you only want to make one pound at a time that's pretty slick now bass pro's got some packets that do five pounds and 20 pounds and sometimes you just want to whip up a pound of it so check out these little packets now today I got hot and spicy and I've got original what I was gonna do was I was going to make one batch of hot and spicy and one batch of original which so I was going to use two pounds of each because I wanted about four pounds of jerky then I got thinking you know what I'm gonna do I'm just gonna mix all the seasoning together so I put all four packets too hot and spicy and too regular and all four packets of the salt cure and I'm going to put it all in four pounds of meat mix it up and then I'm going to dehydrate it the reason I did that is because a lot of people don't like it real spicy and I kind of don't either but you do want a little kick to it so we're gonna experiment here and mix it 50/50 your seasoning for a long time like I have it gets kind of caked in the packet so I broke it up as much as I could with my fingers make it real nice and soft and powdery here the destructions on the directions on the packet here tell you if you're going to use regular meat not ground hamburger regular sliced beef to mix a quarter cup of water for each pack and cure to make a marinade that you soak it in 12 to 24 hours well that would mean I'd need about a cup for these four packets of seasoning and four packets of cure but I only went with a half a cup because it doesn't say to use that but I'm going to use it anyway so I'm going to pour my seasoning in a half a cup of water and the reason I'm only using a half a cup instead of a full cup is because I don't want it to take a long time to dehydrate that out of the hamburger but I do want my seasoning oh this is working out nice I do want my seasoning just to dissolve oh look I got to show this to you here take a look at this now this really dissolves that seasoning so it'll spread out through all of this meat we're going to pour it over this hamburger in a bigger bowl and mix it up and we'll do that well in fact as long as we got the camera shot right there let me go ahead and move this out of the way get our big box out of here and we'll get our little mixing tub two pounds and another two pounds of burger and we'll pour our mixture in here this stuff is so good it's so easy to make and it's a lot of fun and I'll tell you your friends are just gonna absolutely love this stuff there we go let's get that mixed in there good and what we're gonna do is we're gonna put this in the dehydrator and the setting as long as I'm mixing this I'm going to read this a little bit the setting on this dehydrator if you're going to do herbs and spices is like 95 degrees nuts and seeds 105 crafts and then fruits and vegetables 135 then meats fish or jerky it says you run it at 155 which is basically wide open all right we got our seasoning and our salt here now there's some people that don't use the salt here because they're just going to eat it right away and you can choose to do that if you want but I like the cure because it gives it a good shelf life if you freeze it obviously it lasts a long time but even in a vacuum packed bag or just in a you know cool hwhip tub with a lid on it in the refrigerator it's good for several weeks which it won't last that long let me show you a couple other things that I really like to do with this stuff now that we got it mixed up what we're going to do is these dehydrators if you've never used one before have layers in them and you can buy as many as you want I think you can go up like about 10 or 12 and put all kinds of stuff in there but we have 4 racks today here and we're going to load them up with our jerky now I'll tell you something and um don't don't write any mail to me or don't send me any comments or whatever but this is where me and nesco and these companies see dehydrating companies that sell these meat guns or jerky kits they think they call them they are a pain in the neck don't I say don't use them because I they're a pain in the neck first of all you got to open it up pack it in you got to wash them all pack it in try to get all the air bubbles out there then you screw the end on then when you pull a little trigger it pulls forward and somes got air and some doesn't so you get little spits of meat then you finally get a strip and so it's straight big deal all you want is jerky anyway I kind of make cowboy jerky I call it but what I'm gonna do here is just put this on here and why I'm doing this I'm gonna have Sheila go get me my pizza cutter if she would just let that record and go grab my pizza cutter okay alright and I've already mixed this meat up pretty good got a couple little little tips here that I like to use and what I do is I just mash this out flat down to about a quarter of an inch thank you Sheila preciate that BAE I got to get her on camera more anytime she don't have her hair fix she won't come on camera but that's just that woman thing you know and here's a slick part of this i just mashed this stuff out on a cutting board and it makes real neat little cowboy chunks what I call pieces of jerky it looks like what those guys pull out of the saddle saddlebags on TV when you get her down to about a quarter of an inch then I just take my pizza cutter and I cut down through here and I make my pieces how big I like to eat them bingo now let's load the first shelf up here and all you do is take them pieces and lay them in there why clean that gun out and when you squirt the gun it gets the end you can't get it off the tip and you got to try to cut it with a knife it is such a pain in the neck this is the way and plus you can you can shape any little chunk you want if you wanted a little bit different when you pull it up off of there but I like bigger chunks or smaller chunks and you want to leave about a quarter to a half inch in between each piece of meat for air to circulate that's very key let's see I got a little extra there so I'll just mash it together get her down thin to about of a quarter of an inch leave a little space in between each one oh man is that looking good or what and who cares if it's absolutely uniform now if you want the little tubes make it thicker do it and cut it in little strips and now you got something looks like a slim jim but I'm gonna stop the camera and go get something right now and show you so one of my favorite things I'll be right back in a second I actually had to get in my car and drive to the store and come back because I can't live without mustardseed get some yellow mustard see this stuff I already sprinkled some on the little chunks that I already put on there so what I'm gonna do here is I'm gonna sprinkle some of this on the meat let's get a shot of this once all right now this mustard seed looks a little bit small I love this stuff in summer sausage and in this jerky and I tasted a little bit of it and before it gets in here and gets cooked now I put to look quite a bit on this because I really like this stuff then I'm gonna fold it and kind of mash it in there so the seed goes down into the into the meat and I think they kind of swell up a little bit they're almost like eating like a little soft seed that pops in your teeth I just love mustard seed in my jerky and summer sausage both so let's get this down to about 1/4 inch thick and again I don't use that gun because I want to do my little cowboy rough cut looking stuff now what does it matter if the edges in fact because some of the edges are a little rough like this they get cooked a little different so they have a little different texture when you're eating it there we go we're out to about a quarter of an inch here I didn't wear any gloves because I'm gonna eat most of stuff and but if you want to put gloves on for your video that's fine here we go let's take a pizza cutter and cut it and then they just come right up off of there and if they don't come off easy just kind of shape them into the little patty that you want perfect lay it on your dehydrator pad over here I had to go get my celery seed man I forgot all about that but I hate cleaning them jerky guns and then when you're all done the last two inches of it don't come out of the gun anyway so that's meat you just got to take out and do what I'm doing anyway so might as well do with all of it but it's real simple leave a gap in there and I'm gonna take this one here and put it down underneath get my next rack here and again leave about a quarter to a half inch in between each chunk this stuff comes out so good now what we're gonna do I might add this to this piece over here what we're gonna do is we're gonna cook this on the wide open setting of 155 degrees went for about an hour and then we're gonna check on it and they should be sweating other words each one of these chunks of meat will have little beads of fat on top of them as it's cooking out of there and we're going to Matt it down with a paper towel let me see if I got any room for that last chunk on another rack here I think maybe I can squeeze it in here yeah I think so I'll make him a little longer so he fits and just that simple just that easy we got our little seeds in there we got our rack in there now we'll switch this out and I'm going to turn the camera off long enough to plug this in because I forgot to plug it in before I started taping and then we're going to cook this for about an hour till it all starts sweating and then we're gonna and and by the way it had some hamburger left so I'm have to put this in the refrigerator overnight do it as a second batch but we're gonna do it for about an hour then we're going to mat it and I'm actually going to revolve these plates with the top and on the bottom etc and about another couple hours matted again and cook it I remember to do it before about six hours they say you can do it anywhere from four to twelve hours long but I don't think you need to cook it quite that long which we'll check as we go along but right now we're going to plug it in turn this thing on and we'll see in a second no matter how low you set the setting on this as soon as you plug it in it starts running because it wants to try to get 298 degrees so I wanted you to hear it here that it's not very loud works out pretty good but the slick part is all I have to wash is this I don't have to disassemble that jerky gun so I can squeeze and make little strips that look like something in the bag you Whalley see these when they're all done they look cool they're just kind of rough different sizes you take out a nice chunk bites right off soft like the inside of a slim jim which you don't want to eat and taste absolutely fantastic we'll turn this wide open there's our product in there I took my celery seeds so I wouldn't forget and I seasoned up the rest of this meat and I'll set it in the refrigerator until this batch is done then I'll load up another one I'll do the same thing but we'll see in about an hour that's how I do it I just mix it all up put it on a board smash it out with my hands so it's about a quarter-inch thick cut it with a pizza cutter just to kind of give you a system to where to tear it at and they just pick right up you can pick them up with a spatula or whatever you want but I just use my hands man it is the slickest thing in the world let's check this out in about an hour and see how it's sweating and then we'll take some paper towels and mat it down and follow through the process well see you in a little bit and this is gonna be some good jerky well all right it's actually been cooking about two and a half hours because we had a phone call and some friends wanted to meet us down the road and that's the nice thing about these dehydrators you really can't overcook something you can dehydrate it to death too well it gets really dry but that's not going to be the case because this needs to cut for about six hours to to dry it out nice for beef jerky so let's take a look and see what we got all right let's unplug our little unit here see if I can find a place to keep my little cord there we go let's check it out and see what we got happen yes look how sweaty it is all right here we go all you want to do is just Pat these down and get the sweat off of them I should've did it Matt about an hour but that's all right now I'm going to turn them over look at the other side how sweaty that is that's all that moisture coming out of there and all the fat cooking out of the hamburger well Matt this side as well and we're going to do that with each one of these racks we'll check it out and see how it looks on boy it smells so good Kylie this stuff is good and it's just soft and easy to eat it's almost like a plus like eating a hamburger almost a little tougher which is supposed to because it's jerky let me get some fresh towels here but get yourself one of these dehydrators just use some ground burger now this is really good if you mix it about 50/50 with venison and you need to you can't go 100 percent venison well you can but venison is so lean and I don't have any venison hold on a second when okay I'm better now I don't have any venison but I wish I did I can cry a little bit because I don't have any I love enison and everything soups and all that stuff because it's so flavorful the little corners touched and kind of stuck them little guys together there we go tell me that looks just gonna madam good and I'm gonna leave them turned over here if I can figure out which side I just turned over there when they stuck to the paper towel let me tell you something you'll find out if you start your own YouTube channel whatever can go wrong on camera will go wrong on camera you can slice something a hundred times and when you put it on camera your knife will fall on the ground but there we go and then one more I hope this isn't annoying and watching too long you can always fast forward I'm trying to stop up the the juice and because I didn't do it right at one hour there's even some down here in this bottom tray there's a you can see a little bit on the counter but there's a there's a bottom tray it's got some of that grease down there too alright let's turn it over to the moist side again and I'm not gonna do these much longer maybe about four or five hours has only been about two or two-and-a-half hours and they seem just about done they don't have to be that's a couple of questions that somebody's probably going to ask me is why doesn't it have to be over 155 degrees shouldn't it be 165 like you'd cook a steak or pork chops or something like that two reasons one is you're going to frig your and - it's got all that tear in there and that salt just absolutely refuses to let bacteria happen in the shelf life on these frozen of course is months and months and months but even in the refrigerator is going to be and I'm going to move this tray over here so that it reverses the stack just so everything gets even heat put her back on there let me give this about another hour hour and a half and believe it or not it should be done and then we'll sample it and see what the what the finished product is let me go ahead and plug it back in now that we matted that we should have done it at an hour but we had to go meet with some friends so but the nice thing about these is nothing can catch fire it's going to stay at about 155 degrees all it is is hot air blowing down through there in between the pack pieces of meat and you notice another thing - how small the meat got so you can almost let the pieces touch because they're going to pull in smaller so you can fill that tray up but you do need space in between the meat for the air to circulate for it to dehydrate properly but jerky is looking fantastic and we'll check it out here in just about an hour to an hour and a half I got able to about an hour and a half and then it should be done and we'll give it a taste test see you in a second well let's unplug this thing and by the way this does not have a timer on it so if you turn it on by plugging it in and walk away it'll be on next month when you come back is there is no timer it's on I guess it can just keep going and dehydrate forever but looky there Wow can you see that Sheila good looking product here what we're gonna do is kind of DAB our sweating off of there and what's coming up next I know what you're thinking what happened to the chunk that was sitting right here well me and Sheila ate it was good when it fantastic so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna do a little trick here I'm gonna lay this here and I'm going to put this on this paper towel on this plate hope you can see both these in the camera shot can you Sheila yeah all right good then I'm gonna put a couple layers of paper towel by going back and forth and well I've got tear that off because I want to kind of dab this off first it's sweating pretty good now again this has been in there about another hour and a half pushing two hours to write out about five hours and it looks small enough dehydrated enough for me because beef you know you can eat steaks rare and this stuff has got cure in it and it won't last that long because we're going on a little road trip and it goes right in the cooler and it is great for snacking but speaking of cooler and cooling well look at the little boot that's kind of cool but see all the neat little chunks who needs uniform strips when we can do this put a little more paper towel in there do a double layer and what you want to do is let this cool why it's under paper towel why it's being why it's wrapped up with paper towel I'll try to kind of hurry here for you so you don't have to sit there and watch me do this that's good enough we want to lay these pieces in there again oops I'll accidentally leave that piece over there coz I'm going to eat it anyway we'll put this back over here like this maybe one more layer and what we're gonna do here is set this down and put a couple more plates on top of it and then a little bit of shortening on there here's our finished product we're gonna let this completely cool down to room temperature in those paper towels because it will still sweat a little bit as that's cooling and it'll make a perfect product we'll show you the finished product here and a little bit when it cools one other thing I was going to show you a little tip here I'll split this for these yield one other little tip is I mixed my seasoning up in a bowl and you can do that but I really should have got something like this because if you take the meat and smash it out flat then when you mix up your product and pour it on it really covers the product uniform then you can go into each little sector and kind of mix it together then fold it around it's better if it's a flat surface when you pour all your seasoning in there with that liquid so it kind of covers everything and it only has to soak in about that far and you can do that with your fingers this is really a better mixing configuration than the bowl well there it is I hope you enjoyed it I'm not done I will show you the finished product in just a second when it cools off and this stuff is great you can put it in your in your overnight bag and you're heading on the flight going on a read a red-eye to California or whatever they call out or if you're just driving across the country or if you're just sitting at home late night you want some low carb delicious snack and stuff this is it man this stuff is so good make yourself some soft batch jerky it's just tough enough to have a kind of a jerky texture to it but you don't need three feet of dental floss and a toothpicks to get it out of your teeth when you're done it's easy to eat it's really delicious you're gonna love it get yourself a bored and a pizza cutter and you won't have to clean out or even buy one of those squeeze to make it look like this almost kind of things get yourself one of these nesco american harvest and you can really get any brand out there they sell a good seasoning I really like American harvest or nesco I really like their seasoning but Bass Pro has some Cabela's has some you can get them all but a lot of those are three and five and even 20 pound batches I'm not sure I'd want to make 20 pounds of this stuff fine if you're gonna give it to all your friends but what if you don't like it when it's done so make sure you start out with the one-pound packages and then you can test all the flavors and I don't have the paperwork in front of me but they got everything jalapeno the teriyaki everything and make it your own add some pepper flakes but some sugar in there all the above hope you enjoyed this video and I want to thank pretty miss Sheila for doing a great job with all the camerawork close-ups and all that stuff and if you enjoy our recipes subscribe to our Channel tell all your friends about cooking with shotgun red click click on subscribe right down there there's a little bar and then you'll be the first to know when we come out with something new another recipe and one other thing when you watch our videos at the very beginning when the commercial comes on if you watch and we actually get a couple pennies so thank you very much we'll see you next time on cooking with shotgun red and is it the best soft batch half regular half spicy jerky you ever ate fat ain't it ought to be this is Steve Hall in Nashville Tennessee Sam thanks a lot we'll see you next time

Channel: Cooking with Shotgun Red

Views: 126,407

Rating: 4.893908 out of 5

Keywords: soft batch jerky, beef jerky, jerky, homemade jerky, beef, homemade beef jerky, dehydrator, cured beef, cured food, meat, ground beef, Smoker, shotgun red, shotgun red recipes, beef jerky recipe

Id: JEwes5jI6vw

Length: 26min 15sec (1575 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 22 2016